How to turn a NSString into NSDate?

Question

Ive been racking my brains with no luck. Could someone please tell me how i would convert this string:

"2011-01-13T17:00:00+11:00"

into a NSDate?

Solution 1

The unicode date format doc is here

Also, for your situation, you could try this:

// original string
NSString *str = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"2011-01-13T17:00:00+11:00"];

// convert to date
NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
// ignore +11 and use timezone name instead of seconds from gmt
[dateFormat setDateFormat:@"YYYY-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'+11:00'"];
[dateFormat setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone timeZoneWithName:@"Australia/Melbourne"]];
NSDate *dte = [dateFormat dateFromString:str];
NSLog(@"Date: %@", dte);

// back to string
NSDateFormatter *dateFormat2 = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormat2 setDateFormat:@"YYYY-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZZZ"];
[dateFormat2 setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone timeZoneWithName:@"Australia/Melbourne"]];
NSString *dateString = [dateFormat2 stringFromDate:dte];
NSLog(@"DateString: %@", dateString);

[dateFormat release];
    [dateFormat2 release];

Hope this helps.

Solution 2

put the T part in single quotes, and check the unicode docs for the exact formatting. In my case, I have something similar, which I do this:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
        [dateFormat setDateFormat:@"YYYY-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS"];

Again, not exactly the same, but you get the idea. Also, be careful of the timezones when converting back and forth between strings and nsdates.

Again, in my case, I use:

[dateFormat setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone timeZoneWithName:@"America/New_York"]];

Solution 3

Did you try this

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
NSDate *dateT = [dateFormatter dateFromString:str];

Cheers

Comments

[jennas]

Hi, yes i have this NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init]; NSDate *dateT = [dateFormatter dateFromString:@"2011-01-13T17:00:00+11:00"]; NSLog(@"date From string: %@", dateT); This returns (null)

[Aditya]

This will help you stackoverflow.com/questions/4655199/…

[jennas]

Hi, im setting [NSTimeZone systemTimeZone] which is the correct zone. The following still returns null bloody thing! [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd'T'hh:mm:ssSSS"];

[tbone]

That was for my code, you'll need to do something similar for your code. Again, check the UNICODE docs.

[jennas]

Thank you this is perfect. The timezone in single quotes was not expected but was what fixed it :)

[Nick N]

Also, mostly search now for utilities on cocoapods. Here's the query on NSDate. cocoapods.org/?q=NSDate

[user1244109]

couldn't figure out that 'T' in the middle. So that helped. Thanks!